The Good, the Rad, and the Gnarly

Guerrilla Gravity Bikes Annual Shred Race

I like goin’ fast. It’s in our DNA and stamped onto the top tube of every bike that leaves our Denver factory. It’s not just the Guerrilla Gravity rallying cry but also a reminder to continue pushing yourself as your hands and legs fatigue on a long race day. During the inaugural The Good, the Rad, and the Gnarly, “racers” sprinted down 6+ laps of Angelfire Bike Park in order to swing through each checkpoint on their way to the finish line. With this race format, the competition isn’t strictly about minutes and seconds but about planning your day in the bike park, making sure you can hit all fifteen checkpoints in the minimum number of laps with the maximum amount of speed and consistency. “Racers” were provided with the checkpoints and a suggested route 24 hours ahead of time and many were up late into the evening trying to figure out how to get it all done in one less lap than the competition.

On the day of the race, some people opted to jot down their route on their top-tubes or forearms while others worked it out on each subsequent uplift. Some chose to warm-up on the blue and green trails before dropping into Chillin’ and Supreme, others went straight to the double blacks, avoiding the crowds and chairlift lines at the bottom. You see, in The GRG, there are no three-minute gaps. Instead, the race kicked off with a Lemans style sprint where each “racer” ran across the hill, grabbed their bike, and dropped into the trail of their choice.

In just over 2.5 hours the winning men crossed the finish line, impressively lined-up in a three-way sprint to a photo-finish after repeatedly trading positions over the previous six laps. It was a three-way podium for The Smash with Nico Seamons taking the win, followed by Grant Shoemaker and Nick Mardirosian. Forty-five minutes later Ziggy Lanman came down taking the win for the RideItGrrrl class on her Shred Dogg. Twenty seconds after that our first team clinched the Team Category, congrats to Brett Wilson and Tom Hoppe for working together to beat the competition!

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